Presented in three slim vitrines at the Library of Birmingham are a newly commissioned series of eleven album pages, by artists Sophy Rickett and Bettina von Zwehl. A collaborative project, the work has been created in response to a curious misfit of an album by Sir Benjamin Stone (1838 – 1914), one of 80 – 100 of his albums archived in the collection of the library.
Stone, a philanthropist, politician and magistrate was also a prolific photographer who left behind a rich body of work. As Rickett and von Zwehl began investigating the formal, meticulous nature of Stone’s collection, one album surfaced that seemed to be an anomaly.
Album 31 was a random collection of imagery, filed under the letter ‘M’ by Stone and labeled as ‘Miscellaneous’. It contained images which Stone wanted to keep but which didn’t fit into any of his other albums.
Page 20 in the album immediately connected with Rickett and von Zwehl. It showed a central portrait of a woman in a shawl and surrounding her, four smaller images of the moon. What was uncanny was that the subject matter reflected both photographers’ interests: von Zwehl’s work is focused upon portraiture particularly of women and children often arranged in oval frames and in miniature, while Rickett was associate artist at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge in 2011/12. This became the starting point for their contemporary re-working of the original Album 31.
The two artists who had never embarked upon a collaborative project together, decided to pursue a thematic idea of ‘chance and contingency’ (1) informed by the motifs of Stone’s work using their own substantial archives of outboxes. Sifting through these materials from former projects, the artists worked instinctively until interesting connections and relationships between the images began to emerge. Selected images often had to be laboriously re-produced to a much smaller scale in the dark room. This process of returning to their archives, of re-making work, presented a precious capsule for reflection.
The resulting pages are delicate, precise curations of mysteries. Images on the pages appear to connect, yet are veiled, precluding meaning to the viewer. The work evokes André Malraux’s musée imaginaire where the logic of the modern museum is replaced by assemblages of ‘..displaced works of art, made to hang together in different ways’ (2). The work, which never feels contrived, invites introspection, intimacy and provocation.
One page has a central portrait of a child holding an orange. She looks at the camera whilst manipulating the orange with her small fingers. Around the edges three smaller images show a tower block being demolished. A text in the final corner of the page, printed on an orange background, tells a story of a broken escalator. The final phrase ‘The damage is irreparable’ seems to resonate through the page. The inevitability that some things are damaged forever, are irreparable, lingers as I journey to the ground floor aboard a pristine new escalator.
– reviewed by Anna Falcini
- Exhibition Notes accompanying Album31, Library of Birmingham April 2013
- Nagel, A. 2013. Imagining the Museum In N. Bell, G. Massimilliano eds. 2013 The Encyclopedic Palace, Biennale Arte, Vol , Venice. Pp. 83-84
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Useful references:
Grain Photography
http://grainphotographyhub.co.uk/portfolio-type/album-31/
Library of Birmingham
http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/Events
Bettina Von Zwehl
http://www.purdyhicks.com/display.php?aID=17
Sophy Rickett
http://www.camillagrimaldi.com/section/artists/sophy-rickett/images
Sir Benjamin Stone Archive
http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/benjaminstonephotographiccollection
